R and J in the USA

The scratching began in Idaho.

The first night we heard it we thought maybe it was a branch on top of the roof. Actually, we didn’t think that, because only Ryan heard it. Julie slept right through it.

The second night, Ryan shot up in bed around 4:00 in the morning with a flashlight. This time Julie woke up.

”What? What is it?” Julie said with all of the appropriate grog.

”Did you hear that scratching?”

”No.”

scratching noises

”Okay. Yes. Now.”

Luckily, Julie was too asleep to mentally process that she just acknowledged hearing scratching inside of their 6’x20′ intimate living space and passed right back out.

The next night when we heard it again, it was clear. This is just a tree branch that is traveling with us and has the ability to permbulate throughout different parts of the van. Hmmm…maybe that is highly wishful thinkinh. We were starting to think it probably wasn’t a branch.

Before we left our van stationary for 11 days in the parking lot of the Jackson, Wyoming, airport, we had not had the time we had hoped to finish doing all that we had wanted to do. That meant there was still some food in the fridge that would be left unchilled, since we would be turning off the van battery while we were gone. We left that warm smelly box sitting stationary for 11 days out in the world. And we never once thought about how we had basically placed a neon sign outside of it that said, “Attention small critters: Vacancy.”

It wasn’t until the wisdom of hindsight and a couple of nights of pattering that we realized the error of our ways.

When the critter search actually began, we didn’t know whether we had voles, mice, rats, squirrels, or chipmunks scurrying around the unseen nooks of the van.

Of course, once it was really time to do something about it, Ryan conveniently had planned his trip home to a warm and critterless house for a couple of days, leaving Julie to face the mystery solo.

Julie was ready to defend this van against anything, so she was up to the task.

Once Julie found what appeared to be mouse poop on the countertops the day after Ryan left for the east coast, our suspicions about the scratching were undeniably confirmed. We have stowaways. Julie was alone in Moran State Park, having already been woken up by loud scratching the night before. At this point there was territory to protect, and Julie was ready to get serious.

Sorry fellas, this van is for humans only. All other squatters will have no rights of residence and will be faced with immediate eviction.

Once arriving in Anacortes, after disembarking the ferry from Orcas Island, Julie made a beeline to the closest Ace Hardware to pick up the most natural mouse repellent she could find, which she had been researching while lying wide awake the night before. She bought every brand of natural repellent she could find, and didn’t mind going overboard. There were no “have a heart” mousetraps, Julie’s preference when it comes to any living thing. But the heart that Julie had was limited to not being willing to live one more night with mice potentially crawling over her face while she slept and chewing through lord knows what, so she grabbed three very heartless mouse traps and was more than committed to using them that evening. 

Once arriving at her home for the night at the Sol Duc Campground in Olympic National Park, she settled in to relax in the forest’s restful air while she vigorously researched her newly acquired arsenal of mouse-eviction weapons. She set up the botanical repellants throughout the van, the two reusable mouse traps, and the one frighteningly strong rat trap that could easily take off a finger, and plugged in the high frequency rodent sound repellent. When nightfall came, like Helm’s Deep, she was ready for the beasts that would come, though hoping for a different outcome. (Another 10,000 points to those that catch the reference.)

After some lovely defense planning, she easily fell asleep. Somewhere around 11:00 PM Julie awoke to the brutal sound of thrashing. It was clear that the trap by the sink had caught one of the van’s unwelcome residents. Julie woke with a start and a heart rate that skyrocketed as she listened to the horror. “Oh dear,” she thought. “This is DEFINITELY not a have-a-heart trap.” Julie could not get herself to look at the scene, too afraid of what she might see. What if it wasn’t a mouse? What if it was a chipmunk or a massive rat that just had a foot stuck and would drag itself vengefully towards it’s heartless persecutor? Was it something that could leap at her? Would it be a disgusting bloody mess? 

Van life is so relaxing.

It is, actually, most of the time. But this particular episode, not so much. It’s not the critters getting into one’s living space that is unique to living in a van. It’s just how present one is to whatever critters that get into a space so small. There was no other room to go into. Julie was remembering the night she woke up to critter sounds in her apartment in Rochester. When she peeked behind a nightstand to see if it was a squirrel or chipmunk, it burst up and flew into her face. It had been a bat. Getting that bat out of her apartment was definitely more pulse-racing than this particular adventure in the van, but this was close.

After a painful amount of minutes of sounds of that plastic trap being thrashed about by something that was not yet giving up the fight, Julie heard the trap fall into the sink. She hoped that whatever had been in it was still in it.

She couldn’t quite get herself to look at it yet and tried, instead, once the noise died down, to simply go back to sleep knowing that whatever was in that sink was probably not getting out if it hadn’t already. 

She fell into a slightly restful sleep until waking up again at 1:30 AM with the curiosity being too strong. She got up the courage to look in the sink and saw the poor, cute butt of a mouse hanging out of a trap in which its head was clearly completely trapped. Julie felt a mix of terrible guilt for putting a living thing through such an ordeal, pride for having defended her home, and relief at seeing that it was a mere mouse and not something larger. That said, mice tend to make more mice and carry terrible diseases. So, Julie fell asleep knowing that the morning held not only a mouse disposal, but also a fair amount of disinfection. 

Julie’s relationship to mice is a complex one. Like so many of us, she grew up with Minnie and Mickey, Tom of Tom and Jerry fame, Chuck E’ Cheese, and Mighty Mouse. There’s a certain predisposition that has been ingrained towards mouse adoration. Generally speaking, she loves them and finds them to be absolutely adorable. When having had a mice infestation in an apartment years ago she had trapped them in have-a-heart traps and kept them as pets until they started making too many of themselves. They are so darn cute and she has a tendency to squeal at said cuteness. But, like most females (and maybe males too?), the thought of one crawling over her face at night elicits a different type of squeal. At the end of the day, the latter emotion was taking over, and Julie found herself quite ready to defend her turf wholeheartedly and unequivocally. Sorry Mickey, Mighty, Minnie, Tom, and Chuck E. Game on.

After emptying the one trap and feeling partially victorious, Julie wondered if this was the rare case that there was only one mouse enjoying the warmth of the van and looked forward to seeing what the next night would bring.

Julie awoke the next morning triumphantly undisturbed in her sleep and hopeful that, perhaps, against all odds, there had, in fact, only been one mouse. 

That’s a nice thought. A delusional thought, but a nice one.

Once Ryan was back in the van and had been briefed on the mouse battle protocol, we got ourselves ready for bed at Cougar Rock Campground in Mount Rainier National Park.

This time Julie woke up at 3:30 in the morning. She didn’t know why she woke up. She had no cognizance of being woken up by the sound of a loud snap. It wasn’t until she got up to go the bathroom that she saw the floor trap filled with a new little victim in its clutches. So much for the “one mouse” theory. 

And we heard more scurrying in the ceiling. Oh gosh. Don’t let them be living in the ceiling! 

Now the question is, how MANY are there? Knowing mice, there could be tons, and the last thing we want is to let them winter with us. 

Julie left the mouse in the trap to be dealt with when full morning time came. She unplugged the high frequency sound repeller from the wall to eliminate the blue light it emitted. As soon as she unplugged it, she heard the resumption of scurrying above. Hmmm… Perhaps that thing actually works. 

We slept our last night in Washington with the van fully trap-laden and all of our repellents in place. We slept through the night with no mouse activity to speak of and no signs of activity come morning. No mouse poop. No dearly departed. We are not so naive to think they had gotten the message and exited to find more welcoming accommodations, but we like to dream.

We discussed whether it’s best to keep all the repellants out or if we should take them down to coax more of them out into the traps. Since we still had gotten two mice with the repellants engaged, we decided to leave the repellents up in the highly optimistic hopes that it would drive them to leave of their own volition without need for any more loss of life. That said, after a week we’ll take the repellents down and keep the traps up. In the meanwhile, we’ll be using the strategic “fingers crossed” method and continuing to research if there are any exterminators that work on camper vans and RVs in a way that gets rid of the mice while keeping us humans healthy and well.

Sorry, Mickey, Minnie, and crew. This is our 50 States Tour – not yours.

UPDATE: It is now one week later and we have had no mouse activity that we are aware of. We don’t want to tempt fate by celebrating too soon, so we will consider it an ongoing case. The repellants and traps stay up, but nights are being slept through, and there have been no more needless casualties. Hopefully the mice have gotten the message that this van is not as welcoming as it originally may have seemed.

UPDATE 2: Another 2 weeks later and we’ve had two more victims. One in Montana, one in South Dakota with silence inbetween. There is no more scritching in the night and it has been days since our last incident. We now have our nightly trap setting routines and are sleeping like babies amidst the hope that that is not what we have quietly gestating somewhere.